As someone who is passionate about technology, this is my blog designed to help educate people about social media. As well, I want to use this social media forum to bring our growing tech community together.

Note: This is an mySA.com City Brights Blog. These blogs are not written or edited by mySA or the San Antonio Express-News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.

Applebee’s facing a social media disaster

A lot has been written about Applebee’s recent handling of what many are calling a public relations disaster for them.

At issue is simply this. A minister was part of a large party who went to one of the chain’s locales in St. Louis late last week. As there were more than six people in the group, they were charged 18-percentage points for a service fee to their ticket. When presented with the check, she wrote “I give God 10% Why do I give you 18 (percentage points.)

The waitress got the 18-percentage points on the tip for a ticket that was just over $34. Her colleague, miffed by this comment, posted a copy of the ticket on Reddit for others to see.

That Applebee’s employee was terminated.

When faced with a lot of media interest and more than 17,000 social media posts in one hour, the restaurant issued this statement: “The guests who visit Applebee’s—people like you—expect and deserve to be treated with professionalism and care in everything we do. That is a universal standard in the hospitality business. That includes respecting and protecting the privacy of every guest, which is why our franchisees who own and operate Applebee’s have strict policies to protect personal information—even guest’s names.”

If you search the term “Applebee’s” on Twitter, you’ll get a long litany of posts, almost all of them with negative comments against the restaurant. In time, communications professionals will find this social media event on scale with the Tylenol case of 1982. They’ll come up with some interesting theories and strategies. There’s probably going to be some large public relations firm that will write a 5-page white paper on how to manage or monitor your employee social media comments. (Of course, for a fee, they’ll help you monitor the feedback and traffic on your social media feeds.)

However, if you own a business, especially one in the hospitality industry, I’d like to suggest a couple of key rules to address this growing trend as more and more employees will share their feelings about negative customer experiences.

1) Have a well-defined social media policy and one that was not written by your legal team. Lawyers typically like to use words with a lot of syllables in them and like to fill policy statements with words that the average server could understand but doesn’t have the patience to look it up online or use a dictionary. Instead of this legal output, I’d create a simple policy that goes like this: “If you work for us, we ask that you not share your thoughts online about any negative customer interactions without first checking with your manager or supervisor. We know that there are some customers that can make some of you want to reach for your mobile phone on your break and post snarky and unprofessional comments. Rather than doing that, please take a long walk around the restaurant or cool off before post. Should you decide to post those unprofessional comments, we will be forced to terminate you from our team or organization.”

2) Next, I’d post this as part of the policy: ”If your mother, grandmother wouldn’t like to read this post on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin…..about our business, then neither do we!!!”

Those are some basis policies. If you would like help with adding more to an employee’s handbook on social media, please contact someone with social media/communications capabilities. They can help draft a plan that is tailored for your business or organization’s culture.

And finally, I end this blog with a simple thought.

If you had a party of 10 people with a bill for nearly $35 at a restaurant with pricing like Applebee’s, then I wonder what would someone like Jesus would do in a setting like this. My guess is that he would have added at least five dollars extra to his credit card. And, he would have probably thanked the wait staff for taking care of his large party.

It’s sad too that restaurants base their salaries on the expectations that their wait and bar staff will earn more than the minimum wage through the generosity of their patrons, but that’s a debate for another day.